I.　"My people have committed two evils: / They have forsaken Me, / The fountain of living waters, / To hew out for themselves cisterns, / Broken cisterns, / Which hold no water"—Jer. 2:13:

A.　God's intention in His economy is to be the fountain, the source, of living waters to satisfy His chosen people for their enjoyment:

1.　The goal of this enjoyment is to produce the church as God's increase, God's enlargement, to be God's fullness for His expression—Eph. 1:22-23.

2.　God needs to be the fountain of living waters to His elect because He has an economy, and His economy is to produce a counterpart, a bride, for Himself—John 3:29a; Rev. 19:7-8.

3.　God's economy is to dispense Himself as the living water to produce His increase, His enlargement, for His expression—Col. 2:19.

4.　Nothing apart from God as the fountain of living waters can quench our thirst and satisfy us; nothing apart from God dispensed into our being can make us His increase for His expression—John 4:13-14; 7:37; Rev. 22:17.

5.　God's intention is to be everything to His chosen people that they may trust in Him and rely on Him for everything; if they do this, they will receive God's dispensing—Jer. 17:7-8.

B.　God's intention is to dispense Himself into man as man's satisfaction that God might be enlarged, but man became unfaithful and unchaste and forsook God for idols—2:13:

1.　Adam fell by forsaking the tree of life and turning to another tree—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—Gen. 2:9, 16-17; 3:1-13.

2.　Israel fell by forsaking God as the fountain of living waters and turning to a source other than God; this source is signified by the cisterns—Jer. 2:13.

3.　Any teaching or practice among Christians that is not according to the Bible is an idol—1 John 5:21.

4.　Many worship some kind of golden-calf idol for their amusement and entertainment—Exo. 32:7-29.

C.　Sin is to forsake God and to do something by ourselves and for ourselves; this is exactly what the children of Israel did—Jer. 2:13:

1.　They forsook God as the fountain of living waters for their supply.

2.　According to their opinion, they did whatever they could to work out something by themselves for their enjoyment.

D.　Israel practiced apostasy rather than keeping her faithfulness—Jer. 2:19:

1.　Apostasy is a matter of leaving the way of God and taking another way to follow things other than God—Acts 9:2; 18:26; 2 Pet. 2:2, 15, 21; Jude 11:

a.　Apostasy means to be distracted from the right way in following God.

b.　Apostasy is doing something for the self under the cloak of worshipping God.

2.　Dan's apostasy was setting up a divisive center of worship—Judg. 18:30-31; 17:9-10; 1 Kings 12:26-31; 2 Kings 10:29:

a.　Nothing throughout the history in the Old Testament was more sinful or more damaging to God's people than Dan's act of setting up a divisive center of worship.

b.　The source of Dan's apostasy was in not caring for the other tribes; not caring for the other parts of the Body is the source of apostasy.

II.　"With You is the fountain of life"—Psa. 36:9a:

A.　The Lord's recovery is first to recover the matter of life—1 John 1:1-2.

B.　The divine life may be considered the first and the basic attribute of God— Eph. 4:18; John 5:26; 1 John 5:11-12; Rom. 8:2:

1.　According to the divine and eternal nature of the life of God, God's life is the unique life; only the life of God can be counted as life—John 1:4; 10:10b; 11:25; 14:6.

2.　Life is the content of God and the flowing out of God; God's content is God's being, and God's flowing out is the impartation of Himself as life to us— Eph. 4:18; Rev. 22:1.

3.　Life is Christ, and life is Christ living in us and lived out from us—John 14:6; Col. 3:4; Gal. 2:20; Phil. 1:21a.

4.　Life is the Holy Spirit—John 14:16-17; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:2; 2 Cor. 3:6.

5.　Life is the Triune God dispensed into us and living in us—Rom. 8:10, 6, 11.

C.　God wants us to take Him as the fountain, the source, of our life and our being—Jer. 2:13; Psa. 36:9a:

1.　God's intention in His economy is to be the fountain, the source, of living waters to His chosen people for their enjoyment.

2.　The Bible shows us that God is the source in every way; the principle in the Bible is that God does not want His chosen people to take anything other than Himself as the source—Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; Matt. 15:13.

D.　The Triune God has been processed and consummated in order to dispense Himself into our being—John 7:37-39; Rom. 8:11:

1.　God's economy is to dispense Himself into our being that our being can be constituted with His being; this can be accomplished only by God putting Himself into us as the divine life.

2.　By dispensing Himself into us as life, God is accomplishing His economy, that He may have a corporate expression of Himself for eternity—Rev. 21:9-10; 22:1.

E.　We need to drink of God as the fountain of living waters so that He may increase for the fulfillment of His economy to have His expression through His counterpart—Jer. 2:13; 1 Cor. 12:13:

1.　When we drink of God as the fountain of living waters, He becomes one with us, and we become one with Him—Psa. 36:8-9.

2.　The more we drink of God, the more He is one with us and the more we are one with Him and constituted with Him in His life and nature.

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